Ultimate Painting Break Up, Cancel Album Release

Ultimate Painting have broken up, the London band’s Jack Cooper announced today. “Anyone who has worked with us knows that the partnership at the core of this band has always been a very fragile thing,” he writes, “but due to an irreconcilable breakdown we will no longer be working with each other.” Cooper also states that Ultimate Painting’s record Up!, which they announced in January and even shared the lead single from, will no longer be released “at this point in time.” It was scheduled to come out on April 6 via Bella Union. See Cooper’s statement below.

James Hoare and Jack Cooper formed Ultimate Painting in 2014 after the two met while on tour. (Cooper’s Mazes were supporting Hoare’s Veronica Falls.) They released their self-titled debut that year. They followed Ultimate Painting with Green Lanes in 2015 and Dusk in 2016. In a recent press release for Up!, Cooper reflected on the toll of releasing three LPs in as many years: “We started to question what people wanted from us and in the process I think we briefly lost the idea of what the band was. We made the first three records so quickly, so no doubts had had the opportunity to creep in. It was all momentum.”